Franklin D. Roosevelt Biography

Franklin Delano Roosevelt (January 30, 1882-April 12, 1945) thirty-second president of the United States of America in the period 1933-1945. He was born in Hyde Park, New York, United States. His family was linked to politics for generations, he was a cousin of Theodore Roosevelt. His father, James Roosevelt, was a landowner and vice president of the railroad of Delaware and Hudson so the Roosevelt family enjoyed great economic privileges. The Roosevelt family was a traditional New York family. Roosevelt’s mother, Sara Ann Delano, came from a family of French Protestants. She was an extremely possessive mother, on the contrary, his father was always very distant.

Roosevelt had as a hobby horseback riding, practice shooting, fighting and playing polo and tennis. On several occasions, he made trips to Europe where he learned to speak fluent German and French. The Roosevelts were characterized for being a family that developed several philanthropic events. In his adolescence, he lived in Boston where he studied at the Groton School. Roosevelt graduated in 1900. He then enrolled at Harvard College, where he took courses in economics and graduated in arts. While at Harvard, his cousin, Theodore Roosevelt became president, was characterized by his reformist zeal.

Franklin was very attracted by the style of government that his cousin intended to implement, the former was key in the political life of Franklin. However, in 1903 he met his future wife Eleanor Roosevelt, niece of Theodore, and began a relationship with her. Roosevelt studied law at Columbia University but never graduated. Although he did not graduate, he began to work with Ledyard and Milburn, a prestigious Wall Street firm, where he practically exercised corporate law. But after several years decided to leave this profession to venture into politics.

Franklin aligned with the Democratic Party. In that sense, he was elected senator in 1911 and after a while he served as governor of the State of New York (1928), highlighting as a political banner the fight against poverty. But he had to absent himself from the political arena due to partial paralysis. In general, it was taken for granted that the shining heir of the Roosevelt Dynasty would never return to politics. But then he generated controversy when he returned and ran for the post of Governor of New York, winning the election with impressive success, as he resumed his political banner.

With this, he managed to present his candidacy for president representing the Democrats. Roosevelt won the 1932 presidential election by defeating Herbert Hoover; the US context was really a key to his anti-poverty policy reverberating in the minds of Americans. This moment was a historic milestone because it was the first triumph of the Democrats since the time of Woodrow Wilson. His campaign was a success in the middle of the Great Depression. Although it was very criticized by the businessmen, we can not say that his progressive policy was ineffective, it improved the economic panorama. For this reason, he was president for a period of more than 12 years.

We must mention that his most significant presidential term was in 1936, since that time he advanced the draft of the constitutional amendment that prohibited the third re-election as president, for which he was the only US president to govern for four consecutive terms. If we talk about his most representative project: New Deal, was created with the help of progressive intellectuals and technicians, this program intuitively applied the economic policy recipes of John M. Keynes. It promoted the intervention of the State to get the economy out of stagnation and to deal with the social effects of the crisis, although to achieve this it had to increase the public deficit and break the taboo of market freedom. From that moment the Welfare State in the United States began.

From his first presidential period he developed an agrarian reform, the Law of Industrial Reconstruction and the creation of the Authority of the Valley of Tennessee; an ambitious public works program. He also regulated labor relations in favor of workers, guaranteed freedom of association, created unemployment, retirement and disability pensions, and established the forty-hour work week and the minimum wage. These actions earned him much appreciation, credibility and popularity among the American population, generally the most unprotected. But this also generated opposition, some of its measures were declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.

Roosevelt managed to create a social security system and reform American capitalism in a modern sense, allowing the country to regain confidence. But, as the president expressed his greatest objective was the struggle for worldwide supremacy. He established diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union and established a good neighborly policy with countries such as Cuba, the Philippines, and Haiti. But, with the arrival of Nazi Germany, Roosevelt faced the dominant isolationism in Congress, launched the rearmament in 1938 and aligned the United States with the Allied side in defense of freedoms.

After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, he prepared the American intervention in the war. The war economy that he set up mobilized all the resources of the country and ended up imposing its demographic and industrial superiority over Germany and Japan. Roosevelt took forward his project to create a United Nations (UN) and showed a conciliatory stance towards Stalin, but Stalin was reluctant. His wife, Eleanor, was always very important, he was a kind of political collaborator, Roosevelt suffered cancer that took his life while he was in negotiation, the president who replaced him was Harry S. Truman.